Washington, DC, and San Francisco, CA – 27 March 2014 - US Amateur Radio
operators (ham operators) and Federal Government radio stations are
engaged in a nationwide test of their capability to communicate with
each other by shortwave radio, in case of an emergency or disaster. They
are participating in a 12-day joint readiness exercise running from 27
March through 7 April, covering all areas of USA, using a digital High
Frequency (HF) radio system known as Automatic Link Establishment (ALE).
This High Frequency Interoperability Exercise 2014 (HFIE-2014) runs
concurrent with the federal National Exercise Program (NEP) 2014.

ALE is a standardized digital signaling protocol used by each radio
service, ham and government, to establish HF communications between
their own stations. For the first time, the government regulatory
agencies (FCC and NTIA) have authorized these stations to communicate
with each other using ALE. HF radio enables long distance communication
independent of terrestrial communications infrastructure, internet, or
satellites.

To facilitate the communication testing, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) secured temporary authority from the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC). Federal Government radio stations and
hams are allowed to communicate with each other using ALE during the
exercise. Under existing rules, hams have secondary access to 5 HF radio
channels on which Government stations are the primary users.

HF radios used by Federal Government stations have the ALE capability
built into the hardware. Amateur Radio operators have implemented the
same ALE protocols using their personal computers with ham radio
equipment and software. The Special Temporary Authority allows for
on-the-air testing of interoperability between the hardware and
software-generated ALE implementations.

Participation in the interoperability exercise is open to all
ALE-capable Federal Government radio stations and to all ALE-capable US
Amateur Radio stations. While five channels are available if needed, the
test plan calls for using only two of the channels in order to minimize
impact on other stations not participating in the exercise. Specifics of
the STA are as follows:

(1) Temporary modification of the authority granted at NTIA Manual
section 7.3.8(4), which authorizes Federal Government stations to
communicate with stations in the Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service,
to allow communications with any Amateur Radio station utilizing
Automatic Link Establishment, limited to the five channels in the 5 MHz
band which are available to the Amateur Radio Service on a secondary
basis, for the period March 27th through April 7th 2014.

(2) Concurrent waiver by the FCC of that part of FCC rule 97.111(a)(4)
which limits communications with US Government stations to transmissions
necessary to providing communications in RACES, limited to the five
channels in the 5 MHz band which are available to the Amateur Radio
Service on a secondary basis, for the period March 27th through April
7th 2014.

The HFIE-2014 is a semi-annual ham radio readiness exercise coordinated
by the HFLINK organization http://hflink.com <http://hflink.com/>and the
Global ALE High Frequency Network http://hflink.net <http://hflink.net/>

It is open to all ALE-capable ham radio stations. Technical and
operational guidelines for ham and federal government stations are
available at: http://hflink.net/hfie2014

National Exercise Program (NEP) 2014 is a complex emergency preparedness
exercise with activities sponsored by government departments and
agencies, designed to educate and prepare the whole community for
complex, large-scale disasters and emergencies. As part of the National
Preparedness Goal (NPG), it enables a collaborative, whole community
approach to national preparedness that engages individuals, families,
communities, the private and nonprofit sectors, faith-based
organizations and all levels of government.

On Behalf of the new Executive and active members, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all members of the Manotick Amateur Radio Group that we are back on line with a new look and feel. We hope to make a difference by getting more people involved within the hobby, such as community events, field day radio events and emergency services. We appreciate you taking the time to register and really look forward to reading your posts.